

At all of them, you'll typically see a large percentage of Asian diners - always a sign of authentic, very-good-to-excellent food. Here are five fantastic, much-loved dim sum places you should visit - two with made-to-order food and three with rolling cart service. What Are the Best Places for Dim Sum in Boston's Chinatown? Alternately, you can order 4-5 items at once, because they'll arrive one or two at a time based on when the cook finishes them. Typically, diners select and order a few dishes, and then once they've eaten most of them, they order a few more if they're still hungry. The food is usually delivered piping hot as soon as it's done. The kitchen cooks up whatever you've ordered and depending on how crowded the restaurant is and how much the orders have backed up, you may have to wait awhile. You look at a menu (there may be English translations and/or pictures), check off what you want on a paper list (there's often a stack of them along with pencils on the tables), and give it to your waiter. Smaller cafes - usually tiny eateries so tightly packed with tables and chairs that diners and wait staff can barely squeeze through - may offer cooked to order dim sum. You never know what will appear next, and sometimes the food cools off a bit before it reaches you.

In larger restaurants, several servers may be rolling carts around the dining area at the same time. Once the cart begins to get empty, the server takes it back to the kitchen where more dim sum choices are added.

The server marks what you order on a slip of paper and adds it all up at the end to compute your bill. In restaurants that use the rolling cart style, the kitchen staff places small plates containing a variety of freshly cooked items on the cart, and a server rolls it from table to table to let you select what you want. Where is Dim Sum Served in Boston's Chinatown?īefore considering specific restaurants (although you can go straight to our recommendations if you want), you should know that in Boston, you can choose from two types of dim sum serving styles: rolling carts and cooked-to-order. Prefer modern Asian cuisine? Here's where to find it in Chinatown If you're more adventurous, try the preserved eggs and chicken feet. Look for steamed rice buns ( bao) filled with savory pork or sweet red bean paste, little egg custard tarts, steamed vermicelli rolls, crispy scallion pancakes, barbecued ribs, fried chicken wings, meat balls, congee (thick rice porridge) topped with tasty tidbits and fried crullers, juicy shrimp steamed in rice wrappers, shumai, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, short ribs, salt and pepper squid, tofu prepared in many different ways, fried turnip cakes, crab claws - and that's really just the beginning.
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Typical selections include a variety of dumplings, also called "dim sum," plus an almost endless stream of other dishes. The fun begins with what's on the small plates. You can think of dim sum as the Cantonese (ie, Southern China) version of brunch involving lots of "small plates" and tea - although in Boston, beer is also an increasingly popular dim sum beverage at eateries with alcohol licenses.

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